Black and White Photography

[eric-holmes]

Black and white seems to be the my favorite of any picture. But my question is, when you guys shoot, do you set the camera up to shoot in black and white or do you edit the picture after you are done? Is there any advantage of either?

 

[photo28]

Good question. I personally shoot in color and then play with those settings after - usually you dont know if the picture looks better in B&W, Sepia, color...etc until you start editing it...
Unless it's for a BW contest or dedicated for a BW shoot, I shoot in color. I'm curious what others do, though.

 

[Big]

I used to shoot in black and white when I wanted b&w but I shoot color from now on because as photo28 said, you can change tones and colors in an editing program to get deeper reds, blues, etc. When you shoot in b&w, when you want to edit it, the program can't darken desired tones because there are no reds, or other colors in the photo.

 

[ann]

it is better to shoot in color, then convert as one has more control over the process, and a side benefit is having a color version if it doesn't work out as well as you thought.

learning about lighting, texture, shape , tones and form is more critical for black and white, altho, it shouldn't go unnoticed with color, but that is what black and white is all about

 

[burstintoflame81]

If you have the option on your camera, you can shoot monochrome with Raw+Jpeg. Usually the Jpeg will be the photo that shows up on your LCD after the pic is taken and the RAW will always be saved in color. That way you can see the black and white as you are snapping pictures, so you can get a feel for the lighting and everything. Then you still have the RAW file in color that you can do as you please later on in post. I just started doing this and find it to be very useful. Best of both worlds. Hope this helps.

 

[alexanderdel]

Shooting in color is always best.
Like Big said. You can take the colors that will soon be black and white and lighten them or darken them. That way you can almost take any part of the picture and make it darker or lighter.